Functional Roles and Career Paths in Wikipedia

Citation: Ofer Arazy, Felipe Ortega, Oded Nov, Lisa Yeo, Adam Balila (2015) Functional Roles and Career Paths in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW '15 (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1145/2675133.2675257
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1145/2675133.2675257
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1145/2675133.2675257
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Functional Roles and Career Paths in Wikipedia
Download: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2675133.2675257
Tagged: Computer Science (RSS) CSCW (RSS)

Summary

This article develops evidence about role progression patterns in Wikipedia, both theorizing a hierarchy composed of multiple roles at the same layer, and testing the Reader to Leader framework. They also offer narrative accounts of what some of these role progressions might look like, conveyed in terms of archetypal patterns. The article concludes that individuals do indeed follow a path, especially that "content curation" and "border patrol" functions tend to form distinct paths. 

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

This article offers a useful way to talk about roles and transitions in a social system. One important implication for design is the consideration of whether a proposed community offers career paths, and whether without them it can be sustainable.